KOLNA TRAINING

The team hotel Fero Express  is a quick 5 minute drive from the Kolna World Championships course located on the banks of the Wisla river 8 kilometres upstream of Kraków.  Thank you to the slalom committee member(s) who organised the booking a long time ago.  Currently the Canadians and the Aussies are also established at the hotel, which we share with elderly German bus tourists.



All teams are allocated hour long training sessions daily on the course and we are on with Japan and Kazakstan.  On Tuesday each country had two timeslots, which doubled the number of paddlers on the course.  It was glorious chaos with the large Russian squad sharing our slots, descending the course in formation and annexing the eddies on their way through.  A very busy time for Aaron and Martin, with the management team shuttling and catering.  The smaller sessions on Wednesday and Thursday were more manageable with no international incidents.



Otis provided freestyle entertainment when surfing out of an eddy to turn back the way he came, he
somehow dug his stern into the bottom of the course up against a concrete base plate. The downstream water pushed his boat vertically up in the air & out of the water, over backwards down onto bollards which he clipped with his ribs, but fortunately no damage to boat or person. All other team members were in control of their water craft during these sessions.




The only slight negative experienced by the crew is the quality of the water, making our effluent affected home rivers pristine in comparison.




The team is in good heart with only a couple of minor health niggles.  Josh has his 17th birthday today!

4 COUNTRIES IN 1 DAY

Yet another early start, quick van pack, trailer pickup from the Augsburg slalom site, then off to Munich airport to collect Theo Pepper who joined the Under 23 team.  Unfortunately Theo was not allowed to bring his boat from NZ because of a new Thai airlines procedures which ... just so happened to change between the few days he bought his ticket and the 1st of July.  Then on to the German autobahn system! We drove around Munich then headed east along the foothills of the mountains forming the Germany/Austrian border, past Salzburg and pretty countrysides towards Vienna.  A beautiful day, good music (if you like teen pop), fast roads, lots of rest, heading to Poland via Czech Republic.  European drivers are great on the motorways, all working together enabling traffic to move quickly and we only saw one cop and two McDonald's in 10 hours of driving  thru 4 countries. We arrived in Krakow at 8 pm and met up with the rest of the team.

ECA CUP RACE 4 & 5 - AUGSBURG

The format for the ECA races is one qualification race for each class with the top 2/3rds progressing to the final, with a cap of 30 finalists for the men's under 16 & 18, and a cap of 20 for all other classes.  The kiwi team had 5 juniors competing with 3 members of the under 23 team as forerunners. The forerunners had a run before the qualifications and a second run before the finals.






On the first day of racing Kensa qualified for the final finishing in 9th place and Zac qualified finishing in 15th place.



That evening in Augsburg a few hardy team members forsook their rugby heritage and watched Germany defeat Italy at the quarter final of the European Soccer Cup.  The rest of the team learned of the result of the match by from the hour long car horn honking fest after Germany's winning kick.

Racing on Sunday was on a more difficult course which seemed to suit the NZ crew.  Kensa,  Zac and  Josh all made their finals.   Zac had the fastest under 16 flat time in his qualification run, but had 14 seconds of penalties.  Kensa had a great finish of 4th place in the Women's Under 18 K1 and Zac was 3rd in the Men's Under 16 K1, while Josh improved his placing by one.



We stayed at the course for the prize giving to support New Zealand's first podium placing of the tour.  Zac was to receive a bronze medal (or so we thought).  It was a very nice ceremony and we cheered politely for the Aussies & Americans receiving their gold medals  - the only non Europeans to medal.  But after a long wait we discovered the medal winners were from the combined results of the two races over the weekend - not the individual races.  So that was a wee bit disappointing.   All was forgotten over a classic Bayern dinner in the Ratz Keller situated in the basement of the 500 year old town hall, built by the rich Fuggers of old Augsburg.

FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE FUGGERS

We were up and off again for another early start to the "Eiskanal".  The Augsburg course was the first artificial slalom course in the world constructed for the 1972 Olympic Games.  For Gordon it was quite special to be here again seeing Otis paddling on the course because he was here to compete as a member of the New Zealand Team in 1979.  The team only had one training session per day on the slalom course due to the large number of competitors racing.  



Augsburg is a popular and central location for slalom kayaking attracting teams from all over Europe as well as further afield with Aussies, Americans and our Kiwi teams. The field was limited to 200 competitors. The course is in a beautiful setting with well established trees for shade, green grass incorporating terraced seating, other canals for grade 2 kayaking, and paved roads used by cyclists, walkers, skateboarders and inline skaters.  



The team was joined by Claudia Paterson for 24 hours on her way from France back to New Zealand after suffering a dislocated shoulder on the slalom course at Bourg St Maurice a few days earlier.  Unfortunately the injury forced Claudia to withdraw from the Junior World Championship tour.




After an early dinner at the hotel a select group of history & cultural affectionados set off through the old town to view landmarks associated with the Fuggers of Augsburg - a trading family from the 14th & 15th century who put Augsburg on the map and who endowed the city with numerous buildings, churches and monuments.  A pleasant stroll through winding alleys and streets looking at the medieval townscape was enjoyed by the Fugger appreciators.  The tour also took in an old part of town with canals of fast moving water taken from the Izar river and used to power flour mills and textile machinery.  A heavy rainstorm and subsequent rainbow display added to the impressions of a memorable outing. 



Another early start on Friday for the team for their second session on the course, which saw some good improvements from the rustier team members as they continued their European acclimatisation and coming to grips with the uniqueness of the Augsburg course.  



Mary and Gordon left the group for most of the day delivering Claudia to Munich airport for her trip home.  

The group had some more sightseeing in Augsburg old town and then returned to the Eiskanal for demonstration runs.